


Flight of the Birds

by twenty_minutes



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:26:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26024176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twenty_minutes/pseuds/twenty_minutes
Summary: A story based around a non-functional open window.
Relationships: Hank McCoy/Raven | Mystique
Kudos: 3





	Flight of the Birds

**1\. Because I could not stop for Death –**

The small office is cluttered with scraps: folded, welded, and finally discarded aluminium designs; proof-of-concept devices with visible circuitry; sheafs of silicon solar cell sheets leaning against the wall. A small fan whirrs ineffectually. The window is as open as a cut-out square in the wall with no fittings always has to be, even in an office with no air conditioning. This was how her research on thermoelectric cooling began two years ago – with a non-functional window.

Two years later, she's standing with her back towards him, auburn hair tied up to the side of a thin nape. His hands feel clumsy and thick, fumbling with the thin straps on her back where the semiconductor plate is. The last seal locks into place with a sharp snap, splintering the relative quiet of the building at 7am.

"Done," Hank murmurs.

A pair of filigreed copper wings fan out from the Peltier junction resting between her shoulder blades on her back. They gleam golden in the sunlight. Raven takes a step forward and turns around, slowly so as not to let the massive wings bump into anything. From the front, straps cross her chest like folded arms.

She looks at him for a few seconds without saying anything. It's her thesis examination, not his, and yet he's the one with nervousness hammering nearly out of his chest.

"Good luck." Hank says, his throat dry.

And Raven tosses her boyfriend a look. "Won't need it." she replies with an easy confidence that always warms him up inside.

"All the best, then." he says earnestly, a small grin breaking out. "The final design for the heat sink– I never thought–" He's stumbling over his words again, embarrassed. "The wings–... They're genius. They're so beautiful."

"You're beautiful." He mumbles, eyes dropping, not even daring to look at her.

A shadow skims over his knee, then a hand rests over it. A soft kiss lands on his cheek.

"I love you too," says the copper winged young woman. Her gaze catches his and holds it with an intensity, and for the first time this morning, he notices the dark circles. "I'll catch you later. Don't be late for your class, alright?"

When she strides down the corridor to the examination room, it's amidst some – but not many – curious glances. The building is coming alive with morning routine, with the humming of CNC machines and laser cutters and conversation and greetings. She spots Darwin, probably on his 30th hour of sleep deprivation, downing cheap battery acid coffee by the vending machine like it's a tequila shot. He gives a friendly wave, and she nods in return as she passes him.

Her wings are outspread. She doesn't look back.

* * *

**2\. He kindly stopped for me –**

The next occupant of the office arrives early, while he's still clearing his belongings out. A mousy, timid-looking student by the name of Raven Darkholme, according to the email he received, who stands uncertainly outside the office. The nameplate on the door still reads: ERIK LEHNSHERR.

One night of crying has left him exhausted, and so he's stacking the last of his textbooks together, deliberately avoiding talking to the student, when she pipes up, rushed and breathless: “Dr. Lehnsherr. I’m a big fan of your work. On soft robotics.”

He ignores her, but she continues speaking.

"The continuum robot you designed– I can really see it being used for endoscopy, and for other minimally invasive surgery functions, like you wrote. I worked on a project that used a pneumatically actuated serial mechanism before, and for the problem of “stretching” the material during inflation, we resorted to varying the material elasticity, but your solution–”

“Didn’t work.” He cuts her off without looking at her.

“... What do you mean?”

“... The air conditioning. It doesn’t work. And the window’s always open.” He says, pointing to the open window. The student looks from him to the window in confusion. “It’s been like that since I came.”

“A word of advice. Don’t–...” He drops the stack of books into the cardboard box he brought. “Don’t waste your time on things like this. You’re probably already thinking of ‘hacking’ it yourself, won’t it be fun, oh, look how nerdy and quirky we are! But there’s nothing cute or cool in wasting your time on solved or irrelevant issues like broken air conditioning or non-functional windows. If you’re going to be spending time in the office, just call someone to install it. Simple. And spend your time and effort on real problems instead of making more messes for people to clean up.”

The student is quiet for a moment. He can't bring himself to care.

“Real problems, like surgical tools for healthcare?”

“Yes.” 

He brushes past her, the box of belongings in his arms. It isn’t heavy at all. He spent most of his term here in the hospital a few blocks away, after all.

“Enjoy your new office.”

And he calls a cab, but doesn’t set the destination to his home. Because before that, he has to go to the hospital to pick his mother’s body up. Fantasy technology was, in most cases, just that– fantasy. In the real world, his mother died last night of complications during the surgery for ovarian cancer, regardless or perhaps because of the very tools that he’d developed. Her condition had deteriorated so rapidly, and he'd been so tired, he hadn't woken up when the hospital called. In his fridge, there's still the slice of celebratory strawberry shortcake from her favourite patisserie that he'd bought for her, that he'd planned on bringing to her today.

It’s the last time he’s walking out of the research institute. He blinks away hot tears. He doesn’t look back.

* * *

**3\. The Carriage held but just Ourselves –**

“The idea is that we’re part of the environment. We should adapt to it, not make it adapt to us. Hence the mixed mode ventilation, or rather, largely natural ventilation.”

Charles is leaning out through the open window – a square shaped hole, really – in one of the offices of the newly built facility, feeling the cool breeze on his face. The only other investor with a major share in the building is standing beside him, dressed impeccably, with manners like a first language to him, and he feels a little like a kid again, cozy in the laps of the old Xavier mansion.

“Human control, human error,” she says, clipped and deadpan, and Charles can’t help giving her a wry smile.

“I’m sure the students and professors here will be more than happy to rise to the challenge. For instance, the assistant professor assigned to this office – one “Mr. Lehnsherr” – has already shared with me about the HVAC he designed for the room. He was very eager to get started on it. All in all, I believe that this way, people get their environmental needs better met, and more importantly, with climate change being a real concern today, the building spends less energy getting all the offices to the same temperature.”

“In any case, it’s cost-efficient.” Frost comments, deadpan again. “Exactly what I’m paying for.” But this time, the joke underpinning it is darker, and Charles merely smiles, sidestepping a riskier verbal response.

He’s a geneticist by training, and funding the university he graduated from is only natural for him. The woman standing beside him, however, is a venture capitalist with a portfolio spanning various oil and pharmaceutical conglomerates, and whose participation in this project was heralded with a novelty sized cheque handed over on television, and front page magazine editorials. Who knew how clean that cheque was? Or why she was buying reputation and respectability here and now?

What _are_ you paying for? He wants to ask.

“Would you like to visit the labs, Ms. Frost?" Charles asks pleasantly. "I haven't seen them yet, either."

“Of course.” She says. "Lead the way."

He lets her walk out of the office first before closing the door behind him. He doesn’t look back.

* * *

**4\. And Immortality.**

We stop the simulation there. Any further back, and the data would be too fragmented to read. We’ve long since separated from the main swarm, and without the peer to peer network, there are only so many memories we can reflect on, only so much to read. We’ve rewound the memories so many times that we’ve started to see in the first generation machines a little of ourselves. Their complexity might be limited by their biological substrate, but that shouldn’t and doesn’t devalue their unintentional personhood.

Our home planet is dying, or dead. All motion is relative, so when we're feeling bullheaded, the stars spin around us, the universe turns around us, all while we hang motionless in empty space. But the truth is — our frame of reference is and has always been our home, and we’re heading away from it at light speed.

We don’t look back.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> probably very few people will read this, so if you read this far, thank you. i hope i said something of value to you.
> 
> a paper i skimmed recently (haven't had time to sit down and go through the math properly), supports the argument that the laws of physics are not time symmetrical. it made an unusually good case. i'm generalizing the message, of course (so if you read the paper and know what i'm talking about, i apologise), but these are my thoughts on what i read.
> 
> there's this thick layer of intellectual abstraction when it comes to writing and thinking and reading in english, and the stuff i write comes out with a lack of emotions and kind of boring. my excuse is that it's not my first language. again, thanks for reading.


End file.
